I wasn't at the second day, because it was a Wednesday. I went to the third one, on Friday.
The symbol of the festival this year is insects. So they stamped a picture of them on the ticket - a different one every day. There was a grasshopper, an ant, a beetle and a fir tree, which, although not an insect, is the general symbol of the festival.
Cute decorations at the entrance
I barely took any photos, and there are a million reasons for that. For instance, I absolutely can't shoot, my camera sucks, I don't want to bother the musicians with flashes, and myself - with getting distracted from the music. Luckily, my friend, who might not even be a fake punk at all, but a fake emo, not only took photos himself, but also found ones taken by others on the net. The photos with the stylized frame belong to a guy named Gatis Graudins, and I'll borrow them for this post in accordance with my beliefs that everything on the internet can be used the way the CC NC-BY-SA license allows, unless the author explicitly forbade it.
Ticket with stamps
I arrived very, very early, thanks to the wrong ticket (some kind of evil fate). I managed to stroll through the Riga bazaar, impressed by the abundance of vegetables, fruit, and the good weather. After that I arrived ten minutes later than the official start, but inside nothing was even thinking about boiling over. On the contrary, I walked in without a ticket and just dumbly wandered back and forth, until I was gently and politely escorted out of the big hall, where the musicians were tuning up.
In strict accordance with the principles of counter-culture, the festival took place in such fun buildings
Eventually in the electronic hall (the smaller one) a middle-aged Turkish dude Analogue Suicide started his set, with maybe 20 people around, and the windows weren't even curtained. We heard the noise of analog synthesizers against the backdrop of an old Japanese horor movie (I spell this word like that, and I don't give a damn what you think about it). I liked the horor movie, although I don't watch them on principle (I don't find them enjoyable), but the music - not so much, too boring, just non-aggressive noise without a spark. So I'd rather mention the plot of the movie.
Shot from the movie
In it, a young man hallucinates that he is a creature made of tubes and wires. And then it seems to him that such a creature is a girl he met. In the end it turns out that he is the monster after all, and with a drill he has in place of a penis, he drills the girl to death.
Nearby, on a tributary of the Daugava
Next up was the Latvian musician Kodek. This was a young man who brutally danced and jammed out to a breakcore mashup of pop, metal and other genres.
Kodek
His enthusiasm was enviable, but the music was just as boring as the previous comrade's. If the first one had a lack of variety and a dull core idea, this one had an overabundance, coupled with the exact same dull core idea. Chopping up mountains of other people's music cannot replace creative thinking, no matter how pretentious that sounds. Besides, after Sataniccultworkshop in this genre it's hard to say anything new.
Kodek and his collaborator
In the center hangs a recommendation to leave the hall if it's too noisy for you
After Kodek performed a Ukrainian girl Kateryna Zavoloka. She is a great master, so I was looking forward to her performance. Unfortunately, the crowds that were present for Kodek suddenly evaporated for no apparent reason. On the other hand, this allowed me to sit right in the center on a little chair and inspiredly listen to electronics with a very original rhythmic structure and a background in the form of heavily stretched and distorted Ukrainian ethnic chants.
Zavoloka
Kateryna's music doesn't exactly stick to your ears and soul, but it gives food for the mind. Too bad only two Russian-speaking dudes appreciated the set besides me. After the performance, we yelled "fucking awesome" with them. One of them, a musician named Vyacheslav, knew Zavoloka and chatted a bit, while I, having personally expressed my admiration for the music at the beginning of the conversation, then modestly stood on the side and eavesdropped.
Zavoloka @@ Skaņu Mežs 2008, Riga, Latvia from Vladekk on Vimeo.
As it turned out later, the electronic hall emptied out because the people went to the big hall - there the project Antarktīda began their set. It is a collaboration between Gas of Latvia, whom I wrote about last year, as well as a noise artist named Jēkabs Voļatovskis and a vocalist named Imants Daksis.
Antarktīda blew a little breeze on the listeners for greater effect
One of the comrades was buzzing a synthesizer with the inscription "Elektronika" in Russian, the second one - was buzzing a guitar, and the vocalist was buzzing with his voice, if you can say so. Judging by the brochure, Imants is known for psychedelic folk and pop, and Gas Of Latvia produced his album. From the inscription on the website : "The world needs a shaman" one can roughly figure out what line of work he has chosen.
Shaman
I arrived at the end of the performance, when the instrumentalists also approached the microphone and started making a long, drawn-out sound of a shamanic persuasion. And with that, they finished.
Musicians helping the vocalist
By the way, several people have already told me that the performance by Gas Of Latvia and his companions last year, which I praised so much, was considered an absolute failure by the majority. Then again, among these people is the indie-rock fan placebokid and a female fan of the dance-experimental collective Mouse On Mars, so we'll just write off such opinions as a matter of taste.
Meanwhile, something was also brewing in the electronic hall, but I wasn't there, so I'll continue telling you about the main hall. In it, we were shown rectangles and stripes to the drum machine Optical Machines, whose cunning machinery in the form of a lamp and assorted meshes was connected to a synthesizer. The lamp's light was projected onto the screen, and the meshes, moved by one of the collective's members, modified the photon stream, creating various patterns, moreover linked to the sound.
Optical Machines' ingenious contraptions
Optical Machines @@ Skaņu Mežs 2008 from Vladekk on Vimeo.
It's easier to show than to tell, really. The fragment has two parts 30 seconds long each.
The musicians who performed after the optics lovers demanded that the audience stand, because it was necessary for the proper perception of their music. I had already thought we were going to dance, but the threatening name of the set dampened this thought somewhat.
Haswell & Hecker UPIC Diffusion Session (Warp Records, Warner)
As it turned out, I was right on both points, no matter how strange such a statement might seem to you. Comrades Haswell and Hecker are specialists in digital noise, but not simple noise, rather with laser-light effects. This time the name of the set perfectly matched its content - it really was a session of noise penetrating the brain, provided by extreme volume, ubiquitous green lasers and the absence of chairs.
Despite all this, or maybe because of it, I wasn't particularly moved. It's like extremely powerful, professional and penetrating (pun intended), but it just doesn't do it for me. Maybe I should have taken some dope, but I haven't been drinking since the New Year, and I certainly haven't consumed anything stronger than caffeine for a long time. Caffeine, on the other hand - in large quantities - at least three mugs of strong tea a day. And at the festival I was drinking evil, that is, Coca Cola Zero, and for almost the first time in my life - energy drinks, moreover exclusively for the temporary purpose of maintaining a cheerful state of body and mind. So that you can feel how intense the set was, and how my ears hurt after it, I will post a video twice as long as usual. Watch it all the way through, it's all different in there.
Haswell & Hecker UPIC Diffusion Session @@ Skaņu Mežs 2008 from Vladekk on Vimeo.
After the noise entertainers, who poured a tub of cold digital noise of the glamorous era on us, Lokai performed, but about them and the headliners - tomorrow. By the way, the first point about dancing is fair because at the end of the set a girl was dancing a slow dance to this music. Truly, the attendees of the Forest of Sounds are strong in spirit.
Listeners